Contested
by subdivided
Summary: A collection of ficlets written for the deathnote100 livejournal community, although a few were never posted. The name of the chapter is the name of the challenge.
1. Default Chapter

Challenge: Phobias. Give a charcter something to be afraid of.

Author: subdivided

Disclaimer: DEATH NOTE isn't mine.

Notes: This is one of those contest submissions that somehow never got submitted. Bad L backstory ahead.

* * *

L's older brother never understood why L needed special attention, but he always helped out as best he could anyway. "You look tired, Mom," he'd say. "Is there anything I can do? Why don't you go lie down and I'll cook dinner tonight, don't worry about L...Of course I know how to cook. He'll be good today, I promise." 

"You've always known him best," she'd sigh, as if L wasn't in the same room listening with wide eyes. He was easy to overlook, hunched into himself on the worn and tooth-marked sofa. He'd suck his thumb industriously and his eyes would follow his mother or brother around the room while the rest of him would be perfectly still for minutes, even hours at a time. And then he'd break something, or start gnawing on the furniture.

L never talked but he always listened. His first words were, "Mr. Tell, where were you when Miss Young's dog was killed?" He was standing on the Tells' front porch at the time, hair wet from the rain, little head upturned, face solemn but slightly flushed from the effort of standing on tip-toe to reach the doorbell.

After his parents had thoroughly and with great embarrassment apologized to their distraught neighbor, they marched L home and sat him down and demanded he explain himself. L said, "Mr. Tell was always complaining about Miss Young's dog. He owns a gun, an antique rifle he inherited from his grandfather; the dog was found dead in the river but you can tell from the quality and quantity of blood that it died first, probably from a gunshot wound, and was thrown in afterwards."

L was five and spoke calmly and in complete sentences. Prior to this moment he hadn't spoken at all.

"He's doing it on purpose!" his mother screamed. "He's making fun of me! Two years of speech therapy and all this time we thought he was retarded when he" - here she realized L was in the room still - "why didn't you say something! We were worried about you!"

L only looked at her. "I didn't think it was necessary," he said. And in the ensuing scuffle, as his mother lunged forward and his father restrained her, somehow his older brother was pushed into the stove where dinner was cooking - stir fry, because that was easiest - and his hand was caught against the pan and the whole house stank, stank of burnt meat for days afterward.

And that is why L doesn't like cooked food. It has nothing at all to do with mageirocophobia.

* * *

L was sent away to school in Germany at age six, an experimental new school for awkward geniuses where the students all lived together away from their families. He had his own room and four classes daily, in Geography, Literature, Algebra, and Normal Human Interaction. Mrs. Price, his teacher for NHI, had a flipbook with exaggerated facial expressions drawn on one side and the emotions they were supposed to represent printed on the other. In class she often taught from that book, with the pictures held out so that all of her students could see them. "This is a sad face," she'd say. "See how the eyebrows are knitted together and the mouth is curving down in a frown?" 

"But Mrs. Price, how is that different from an angry face?" a student once asked. L knew the answer without having to be told: an angry face had eyes narrowed to slits, a sad face had eyes squinted shut. No one ever looked like the faces in the book, though. Mrs. Price, for example, had a Happy mouth but her eyes were Sad. L decided that his end-of-year project would be a better book, with at least twice as many expressions in it.

When L turned his book in at the end of the term there were fifty times more faces in it and L was pronounced Top Student. His name was engraved in gold on a plaque in the school lobby, the first name ever displayed there. L's school was so new that his class was the first to graduate, but that wasn't until L was thirteen and even the Top Student in Normal Human Interaction couldn't master it completely when for seven years he hadn't had any Normal Humans to practice on.

L does not have Sociophobia-if he seems afraid of society it is only a reflection of a childhood spent locked away in a German academy.

* * *

In England L lived with Watari. It used to be that sometimes, on Tuesdays, they'd go to the see the Royal Botanical Gardens, a tradition that began with Watari somewhat helplessly supposing that L might need time to adjust after his long stay in Germany. The Royal Botanical Gardens were almost like the neatly manicured grounds of L's old academy and Watari hadn't had to deal with an adolescent boy in many years. Boys like fresh air don't they? As a matter of fact L does, or did-these are happy memories. 

During these strolls past the sculpted marble fountains and strictly geometric rose beds which comprise the Royal Botanical Gardens-please stay off the grass-they'd hold hands. Sometime around June of their first year together L told him he'd rather they not. "There isn't any particular reason that I don't like people to touch me," he explained, "but I'd appreciate it if you didn't. That applies to hugs and pats on the head as well."

"You're afraid of touch?" Watari asked. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize."

"It's alright," L said. "I've always been this way. Aphenphosmphobia, it's called."

The distinction between a phobia and a conditioned response is an important one, which is why L is always very careful to make it. A phobia is an _illogical_ fear.


	2. Drinking, Drunk

**Challenge**: Drinking, Drunk. Let's see 'em smashed.   
Author: subdivided

Disclaimer: DEATH NOTE isn't mine

* * *

"More wine, Raito-kun?" L asks. He hoists an elegantly monogrammed bottle that is less than half full.

"Of course," Raito answers, already offering his glass. L reaches half across the narrow table to pour, his hand disappointingly steady. Inspectors Masuda and Yagami have just begun another inappropriate drinking song; Raito winces and reflects that Matsuda's gallant sense of pitch is _almost_ enough to make up for his father's braying monotone. Aizawa has fortunately turned out to be a quiet drunk, content to brood alone in the furthest corner of their poorly-lit hotel room.

"And you, Ryuzaki?" Raito asks. He takes a single cautious sip of wine. It is excellent, obviously imported although he never would have guessed Australian. Raito surreptitiously shifts his glass to his left hand as L's eyes turn upward, considering.

"Of course," L replies, after a long moment. Raito obligingly fills his glass to the very brim. L, too, is cautious; Raito concludes that this has been one of his less elegant schemes. He transfers his - considerably lighter, and his sleeve is slightly damp with wine he won't be drinking - glass back to his right hand for a toast; after a minute L does the same.

They continue this way through two repetitions of "The Drunken Fishman" and one of "Those Yokohama Strippers" before L begins to blink, rapidly.

"Is something the matter, Ryuzaki?" Raito asks in tones of calculated concern. He can't help glancing toward to bottle- it's empty.

"Not really," L replies. "It's only…" and here he lifts his right arm, the one attached to the chain. Raito's left arm rises with it and his eyes narrow as he considers.

The lighting might be bad, but it isn't _so_ bad that he can't see the way the chain is dripping, or that his sleeve isn't the only one stained red with wine.


	3. An Outsider's Perspective x2

Challenge: An outsider's perspective. What do the ordinary people think of events in the manga?  
Author: subdivided

Disclaimer: DEATH NOTE isn't mine

Notes: I wrote two for this one.

* * *

For Those Who Need Third Chances

The first time he snuck out of his father's apartment, it was through the window and onto the fire escape at just after two in the morning. He bruised one knee when he slipped on metal unexpectedly wet with rain and cut his right palm - thrown haphazardly out for balance - on an inconvenient nail. But he did not fall or, worse, wake his father who slept in the front room, and so he considered the night a success. He still thought so a week later, when the cut became infected and he had to be hospitalized, because he knew that the heart attack his old man would have when he found out would require much more than four hours in the emergency ward and a few antibiotics.

It wouldn't hurt to shake the old man up a bit, make him take notice for once. Actually it would serve him right, the self-righteous prick.

The second time he snuck out of his father's apartment, it was after one and there were no injuries - at least, he wasn't injured. It was different for the other guy. (For a long time afterward he'd felt queasy and scared. Then he'd remembered to be angry at his father instead.) He returned the same way he'd left, quietly slipping into the apartment and past his father asleep on the couch. He was a richer man than he'd been just a few hours ago, but it wasn't about the money.

Showed how well that prick knew him, then, didn't it? (He felt like laughing but didn't think he'd like the sound of it, so he bit the inside of his cheek instead.) His old man was nothing but a collection of rules, his own and the stupid justice system's, but you know what? _He_ wasn't bound by any.

The third time he snuck out of his father's apartment he was caught standing over the body with the knife still in his hand. His father, who had a different last name, pled conflict of interest when asked to preside over the case, his ears burning red with shame. The son asked, scornfully, whether he was embarassed because he hadn't wanted the other judges to find out about his Delinquent Son, but his father just sobbed and said no. It was because he'd failed him. He pledged to do better in the future, and his eyes were redder than his ears.

In the end none of it mattered, because the son's face had been all over the nightly news; he died in his cell (heart attack) before the case ever came to trial.

* * *

Saturday Night Conversations

Rick Hunner was young and hawkish and Californian and - this was always the first thing that came to mind - _driven_. He had a bad habit of living for his work but was pretty good guy, really, to have a few beers with on a Saturday night. If nothing else he told good stories.

"Have I told you about my latest client?" he'd ask, looking right at you and ignoring the way his mug was leaving rings on the countertop. "He's a real character - apparently schizophrenia runs in his family. Completely crazy, hallucinations and everything. Do you know what he did for a living before he went nuts? He was a security guard. With a _gun_. Scary, huh? But it's an easy case for me; I only need to wait for the psychiatric evaluations to come back before I can get his sentence reduced."

He was San Francisco's highest paid public defender, and he was a great talker. He'd tell stories about crazies, he'd tell stories about self defense or extraordinary circumstances or outside manipulation or even, occasionally, innocent people. He was both slick and sincere. He'd rarely talk about simple murderers, and always with a slightly disbelieving set to his shoulders and eyes that wouldn't meet yours but would slide away to his beer.

Even more rarely, when he was feeling particularly morbid or particularly honest, he'd talk about the clients of his who'd been murdered by the state. That was the way he'd put it, too: "Because I lost a case, a man was murdered." He took his job seriously.

And he hated, hated, _hated_ Kira. What was the point of working so hard to save a human life, he'd ask, when Kira could snatch it away again so effortlessly? What did it all mean except - and this was when he felt like joking - that Kira was a Republican? Too much Kira talk meant he'd drink too many beers, and by the end of the night, when he no longer felt like joking, he'd admit that he wasn't sure what it any of it meant anymore, except that if this kept up he'd be out of a job but more importantly:

The world would be a terrible place, with only that false god Kira to decide who lived or died. Whatever happened to reasonable doubt?


	4. Alternate Professions

Challenge: Alternate Professions. Although this is techincally more an Alternate Universe.  
Author: subdivided

Disclaimer: DEATH NOTE isn't mine.

* * *

Vienna, 1875  
The floor was awash in color, ladies in bright dresses performing exactly the steps of what had - several months ago - been England's newest dance sensation. Their escorts, clad in either tuxedos or the considerably stiffer black uniforms of the Imperial Regimen, followed. Raito hid a yawn behind one elegantly gloved hand. Leaning casually against the wall, he surveyed the room.

A dumpy older woman was walking toward him. The hostess, Raito assumed, although they hadn't yet been formally introduced. Usually the unattractive ones were.

"Officer," she said, and curtsied.

Raito bowed back, stifling another yawn. "Madam the hostess. Congratulations on an excellent party."

"Is it, though?" she asked, and Raito noticed for the first time that under the thick makeup her eyes were sharp. "You seem bored, if you don't mind my saying so."

Raito couldn't help it. He laughed. "Forgive me, Madam. I've just today returned from Bosnia- I'm afraid the stimulation of the past few months has left me rather worn."

"How exciting!" she said. "Come, you must tell us of it!"

Raito allowed himself to be lead across the dance floor; the amused expression on his face somehow did not reach his eyes. His gaze was not on the ballroom at all, but back in Dubrovnik, in a badly lit small room dominated by a narrow wooden table.

Across the table sat the mastermind behind the so-called Christian Revolutionary Army. Vienna's ally, for the time being. He was a strange man, with strange habits which in all likelihood did not include a great deal of sleep.

L. It was the only time Raito could remember feeling challenged.


	5. Alternate Ownership

Challenge: Alternate Death Note Ownership. What if someone else found the thing?  
Author: subdivided  
Disclaimer: DEATH NOTE isn't mine

Notes: Based on something Daddy Yagami said in the hospital.

* * *

Crybaby

Sayu barely made it through lunch, had to forcibly swallow the bile threatening to rise in her throat, and was it just her or had the melon bread been particularly tasteless today? She went straight home after school - didn't swap stories with Chiyoko, didn't follow Mai to the arcade, didn't set an appointment with Fujimoto-sensei for next week.

At home she shrugged past her mother standing anxiously in the hall, took the stairs three at a time, kept her gaze fixed strictly forward as if glancing to the side were a weakness. Third room on the right, and after slamming the door open hard enough to leave a mark she kicked it closed behind her, viciously, before throwing herself onto the bed. She couldn't hold back anymore: she cried, great gulping silent sobs with her head turned into her pillow so that her mother wouldn't hear her.

It had been all over the news that morning: Aya and Kaori were dead. What had started as a joke didn't seem so funny now. She couldn't stop crying. At this rate she'd be the next to die, of dehydration.

"Sayu! Come down for dinner!"

She wouldn't be ready to come down for another year at least. That stupid notebook! Aya and Kaori were dead. She hadn't been able to look her classmates in the eye today and she wouldn't be able to look them in the eye tomorrow either.

"Sayu! We're all waiting for you!"

Her mother was waiting, and Father and Raito. But she couldn't go down without an alibi - they'd want to know why she'd been crying. For all she knew Father was in charge of the investigation. What was she going to do? Aya and Kaori were dead and she'd killed them.

Someone was knocking. "Sayu?" Raito asked. From her place hidden in the covers she could hear the muffled sounds of the door opening and closing. "I'm coming in," he said, belatedly.

_How rude. But if it's Raito..._ His fingers brushed her shoulder. "Sayu, is everything alright?"

She emerged from under her comforter and turned to look at him; her face was swollen with tears but her eyes were full of hope. _No_, they said. _But it will be._

Sayu swallowed. "Brother, there's something I need to show you."


	6. Genderswap! x3

Challenge: Genderswap. The challenge was to change the sex of a major character, and trust me, unless it _was_ a challenge...  
Author: subdivided

Disclamer: DEATH NOTE isn't mine

Notes: I wrote three for this one. The first and third are my only ever attempts at exactly-100-word drabbles.

* * *

Why Her?

"Good night, Raito!" Misa left with the slight sway to her hips that meant she knew he was watching. All things considered, it was patently unfair.

"Why should she have it so easy?" Raito asked no one in particular. "Why does her shinigami take sides?" He turned to his own morbidly grinning god of death, for the first time regretting that Ryuk was only an observer, never an ally.

"Why couldn't you have been female?" It was a rhetorical question.

Because Ryuk's smile couldn't get any wider, bug eyes glowed. "What makes Raito so sure I'm not?" she purred.

* * *

Film Noir

"I first met Light three weeks ago last Wednesday. Her old man introduced us: showing his daughter the "less savory" parts of the family business, he said. He didn't look too happy about it, but then I expect that. Those straight-laced Policeman types are all the same; they think just 'cuz us PIs aren't handcuffed to a Proper Procedures manual, we got no morals. I for one got a strong sense of Justice. I could tell right away that Light was different from her old man. She acted the same, though.

"What can I say? I'm a simple kind of guy, I do what I want and I don't let no one tell me no different. Light, she was real society-oriented, the sort of gal who'd put leftover chocolate cake in the fridge and it'd still be there a week later. All restraint, no heart. But man, I tell ya, she was a brain. Not too bad-looking, either - a shame those smarts, that pretty face, had to come with a real killer disposition."

* * *

Masked

Watching Misa leave was like watching a celebrity wedding, all trailing lace and adoring hangers-on. Light had a headache.

"It's not fair," she said to Ryuk. She pouted for him, prettily; the expression was familiar but so unlike the Light he knew that Ryuk couldn't place it at first. "Why couldn't you have fallen for me? I'm much cuter than Misa. No, don't answer." Her mouth turned downwards and her eyes vicious all in an instant, playfulness erased with the ruthless efficiency of a slammed door.

Ryuk wondered, fascinated, whether the sweet face was the only side of her other people ever saw.


	7. Minor Characters

**Series:** Death Note  
**Challenge:** Minor Characters  
**Words:** Three drabbles of exactly 100 words each. I can't believe it either.  
**Notes:** I heart Aizawa.

Cover-up  
Aizawa ducks into an alley a block from the apartment to straighten his tie and rearrange the documents in his briefcase. He lets himself in with a smile for his little girl; she runs from the kitchen at the sound the door and clings to his legs even before the "tadaima."

"Daddy! We made Sukiyaki for you! I helped a lot!"

"That's good," he says, and removes his jacket and tie with one hand so that he can ruffle her hair with the other. Yumi watches from the doorway, smiling and shaking her head.

"Dinner is ready," she says.

* * *

They sit at a small round wooden table in a kitchen with peeling yellow paint.

"Tell me about school," Aizawa says. He stops eating when Yumi and Eriko aren't watching; no appetite. "Are you getting along with your classmates?"

Eriko makes a face. "You asked me that yesterday."

"I know," he says, "but that was yesterday. What about today?"

"The same."

Aizawa smiles and forces himself to finish his rice. The lights flicker. Yumi fingers a sleeve, her eyebrows knitting together. Before he can ask, she lists in detail all of the things she and Eriko have done today.

* * *

Eriko is watching television in the living room. Yumi is washing the dishes and Aizawa is watching her.

"So," she asks, her voice artificially light. "How is the case?"

"The same," Aizawa says.

"No leads?" she asks. She finishes a plate and sets it aside to dry. Aizawa watches the long line of her arm as she reaches for the detergent.

"No," he says. "It's been pretty routine."

"Ah," she says, and her eyes fall to the fourth chair at the table. It is covered with documents from a case she knows ended months ago. "As long as you're safe."


End file.
